


The Amazing Anansi #1

by Enchillchilla



Series: The Adventures of the Amazing Anansi [1]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Michelle Jones, Bisexual Michelle Jones, Crime Fighting, F/F, F/M, He's complicated, Looking for beta reader, Michelle Jones Has Powers, Michelle Jones is Robin Hood, Michelle Jones is a Little Shit, Michelle Jones-centric, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Not Beta Read, Organized Crime, Protective Peter Parker, Tony Stark isn't a good guy, Vigilantism, but he isn't a villain either
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29398053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enchillchilla/pseuds/Enchillchilla
Summary: All Michelle wanted was a plausible excuse to hang out with Liz. That's the only reason she tried out for the stupid Academic Decathlon team to begin with. She certainly didn't expect to ace the try out test so spectacularly that she'd be forced to go on a celebratory field trip with the team. And if she knew she'd be bitten by a genetically enhanced super-spider while on said field trip... well... in hindsight maybe she should have just tried chatting Liz up after school like a normal person...
Relationships: Liz Allan/Michelle Jones, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Tony Stark
Series: The Adventures of the Amazing Anansi [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2161344
Kudos: 7





	1. The Bite

A red legged, black bodied spider carefully scuttled along the fibrous walls of it’s web tunnel. The filament hairs along its long slender legs picked up the vibrations of the glass wall of it’s enclosure. Its human caretakers were coming to feed it, right on schedule.

The half-dollar sized spider tensed its legs, preparing for the jump that could mean freedom from its transparent prison. Just as the plastic lid began to rise, the spider leapt for it’s perceived freedom. Its body flipped through the air with preternatural grace, aligning itself midair so it landed legs first against the underside of the lid. 

The lid was lifted farther off the enclosure, and as soon as it judged there was enough distance between the walls and the lid, the spider made another leap. It tucked it’s legs into its body, barely clearing the gap and skittering along the nearby countertop. From there, it scurried behind some unused lab equipment, unseen by the laboratory technicians.

“Hey Olivia, don’t keep the enclosure lid open too long, you know that one is an escape artist!” 

Olivia rolled her eyes as she dropped a wriggling cricket into the mass of webbing haphazardly strewn about the glass tank. 

“I got it, Curt.” 

Curt crossed his arms, “Seriously, Olivia, you know how tricky this one is. Plus we got that field trip coming in today, so we have to make sure every one of our living specimens are secure.”

Olivia huffed as she carefully replaced the tank lid. “Ugh, don’t remind me. You know, I didn’t spend nearly a decade earning two doctorates to babysit a bunch of snot nosed-”

“It’s not like they’re toddlers Olivia. It’s the Academic Decathlon team for one of the most prestigious high schools in the country,” Curtis interrupted her. 

Olivia huffed, “You mean privileged snot nosed brats who are actually smart enough to plagiarize our work!”

That actually got a laugh out of Curtis. “Oh, now you’re just being paranoid. Come on, we still have enough time to grab lunch before they get here.”

Olivia perked up a little bit. Now that she thought about it, she was getting a little bit peckish. “That’s the first good idea you’ve had all day. You know, if there’s one decent thing about working for Stark Industries, it's the cafeteria.”

As the duo left the lab, the small black and red spider crawled from its hiding place. Free to explore its new surroundings, the spider did what most spiders do, and sought elevation. It climbed up the various pieces of equipment, jumped to a nearby wall, and clambered up the vertical surface to the ceiling. Perched above it’s old enclosure, it set about making a new web for itself.

* * *

Michelle sighed as she turned another page of _Journey to the West_. It was a bad sign that her newest literary obsession just wasn’t hitting like it used to. The school bus jostled as students jockeyed for seats. Oh, how she loathed being here, and moreover, loathed herself for getting her in this mess.

She tried out for Academic Decathlon on a whim, a flight of fancy that she just felt one day, at least, that’s what she told herself. It _totally_ had nothing to do with the freakishly hot team captain, honest. 

Okay, fine. In a moment of weakness she let her dumb teenage hormones take the wheel. And lo and behold, with her keen academic mind, burning desire to be the absolute best and the ultimate power of her attraction to the team captain, she aced the try-out test. 

Which would be actually legitimately really cool if she didn’t also get dragged along to the ‘celebratory field trip’ to the Stark Industries Biomimetic and Genetics Research Laboratory. And that was how she found herself sitting on a stupid bus, filled with obnoxiously loud kids, going to a place owned by her least favorite human being on the entire planet.

“Hey, why so down? Aren’t you excited to see cool science stuff?” A too-chipper voice said from the row behind her.

For some reason that she could never quite place, the overwhelming enthusiasm of her friend/acquaintance Peter always got a smile out of her. 

“Sorta. I would be a little bit more into it if it wasn’t owned by Tony ‘I’ve got more money than God and I will do everything in my power to let everyone around me know it’ Stark.”

“Oh, come on, he’s not that bad. He’s working on renewable energy and all kinds of philanthropy and stuff and-”

“Eh, I’m kind of on Michelle with this one, Peter,” Ned cut in. “Sure philanthropy is all well and good, but I’d also kind of prefer if the guy _didn’t_ cause half the problems he’s trying to solve.”

“Hey, that’s not fair, he’s-” Peter’s voice died in his throat as their team captain leaned against Michelle’s seat. 

“Do you guys mind if I sit here?”

The three young freshmen were so starstruck that an embarrassing number of seconds went by before Michelle had the wherewithal to answer.

“Uh… Sure, Liz…”

“Great!” Liz had to take a second to compose herself. Oh, they were just so cute, she couldn’t stand it. She had to be careful though, a bemused laugh could spiral the trio’s sense of self worth.

“You know,” she said as she set her backpack between her legs. “Tony Stark can be a genius playboy philanthropist who is genuinely trying his best to help the world, _and_ a myopic privileged billionaire prone to making catastrophic mistakes. None of these things are mutually exclusive. People are complicated, you know?”

“Oh… Well, yeah… I guess I never thought of it that way before…” MJ droned monotonously. She _might_ have still been in shock that the most beautiful person on planet earth deigned her worthy to sit next to.

To her immense relief, she was spared the embarrassment of trying to make decent conversation when Mr. Harrington called for quiet and began needlessly going over field trip procedures. Michelle tuned him out in record time, returning her attention to her tale of the immortal demon monkey and his adventures to enlightenment.

* * *

About ten minutes into the field trip Michelle had to admit despite the facility being owned by someone she considered to be an utterly repugnant human being, and the sometimes dubious morality of the projects being worked on, this was some of the coolest stuff Michelle had ever seen. A lot of it was biomimetic robotics, drones segmented drones modelled after centipedes designed to crawl through any terrain, models of commercial aquatic vehicles that literally swum through the water, things like that. 

A particular hit among the kids was the facility’s unofficial mascot, a hyperactive terrier named Charlie. The poor dog lost three of its legs in a car accident. The owners were advised to put him down, until an engineer at the facility got wind and immediately got to work on biomimetic prosthetic legs. And now the excitable little dog was able to zoom around like any other dog. Though, Michelle did notice that he nibbled at the attachment point of the limbs an awful lot. Michelle wanted to spend the rest of the trip just hanging out with the dog, but unfortunately the tour had to continue.

“And here,” Dr. Connors said as he continued the tour, “is one of my personal projects.”

He led the class to a large glass display tank. Inside was a pair of… well, Michelle guessed they were human lungs. They were attached to a biomechanical pipe of some kind, and pulsed with a mesmerizing and also viscerally disturbing quality.

Curt paused for the class to process their feelings of mild to extreme disgust. “It is quite the sight isn’t it. And yes, these are in fact, a pair of human lungs. But I think you’ll be surprised to know that these are the very first functioning pair of cloned human organs. Can anyone guess how this was accomplished?”

Of course, Peter raised his hand. “Uh… stem cells grafted onto a biological lattice of lung tissue?”

Curt smirked, obviously impressed. “Oh, very close, but not quite. These were actually made from human skin cells, believe it or not. Only we genetically modified them with gene sequences isolated from certain species of amphibians and reptiles. Some species have the ability to regrow catastrophic limb damage. We found the genes responsible for that ability, spliced them into skin cells, and artificially transformed them into something very similar to stem cells. And from there, they generated a fully functioning organ.

“Unfortunately, we cannot yet use this technology for full fledged organ replacement. If these lungs were ever to be implanted in someone, they’d almost certainly be rejected due to the anomalous DNA present in-”

Michelle tuned him out, instead staring at the disembodied essentially human organs. The novelty of the science on display had officially worn off. Michelle found herself pondering the implications of this project. She wondered how many laws Stark had to dodge to actually modify the human genome. Actually, what was she thinking? Obviously he used his vast wealth to grease the palms of legislators to fast track certain amendatory bills to make this project perfectly legal. Otherwise how would he be so confident showing it off to a bunch of high schoolers?

“You okay, Michelle? You’re looking a little green,” Liz asked.

“Oh yeah,” Michelle nodded just a tad too eagerly, “it's just uh… I’ve never been more aware of my own breathing.”

“Yeah, it’s beyond creepy,” Liz gulped. “Okay, I can’t keep looking at this or I’m gonna hurl. Come on, the tour is moving on.”

The class shuffled to the next display. This one featured a huge water tank. An octopus stared curiously at the class from inside. It looked by all accounts to be a normal, everyday cephalopod, save for the glowing metal rings around the base of each tentacle.

“So, this here’s my little pet project,” Dr. Octavian said as she lightly tapped on the glass. The octopus swam to the surface, where Olivia dropped in a piece of shrimp. The morsel was quickly engulfed in a mass of tentacles, and the octopus retreated to a synthetic coral hide to consume its snack.

“Yeah, he can be shy sometimes. Anyway, what we’re studying with him is the cephalopod’s ability to independently control eight limbs at once. The rings you saw on his tentacles measure the synaptic signals and how his brain copes with all the incoming and outgoing data. One day, we hope to apply this to exosuits with more than four functioning limbs so we-”

Again, Michelle stopped paying attention to the scientist’s explanation. The octopus itself was far more interesting to her. At least they seemed well taken care of. The tank was well decorated at least, with seemingly real living aquatic plants and interestingly shaped coral for the octopus to hide in. Scattered half buried in the substrate were also a myriad of… Michelle guessed they were the octopus’s toys. Jars, plastic hoops, smudged mirrors. Michelle sighed. At least the little fella had stuff to play with. 

The tour moved on, stopping at yet another glass tank. This one featured a large faux branch, barely visible under the mass of spider webs. 

“Here we have our arachnid experiment, obviously,” Olivia said. “Unfortunately this one is significantly more sensitive than the others. All I can tell you is it involves an experimental genetic modification delivery system. Don’t bother looking for our eight legged friend. They’re pretty shy. Anyway, next we have our electric eel tank. Yes, we have an electric eel tank, and yes, we do use it as an incredibly inefficient method of executing industry spies-”

“For legal reasons, I’m obligated to inform you my colleague is joking,” Curt interrupted.

Michelle rolled her eyes and stared into the apparently empty tank. When she was a little kid she could always find the camouflaged animals in their enclosures at zoos and stuff. Though, as she peered into the lattice of webs, she had to admit, this spider was a master of hiding.

Little did she know that the spider she was looking for was actually hanging by a hastily constructed web a couple dozen feet above her head. And as she peered into the glass looking for it, it stared at her with it’s beady, unblinking eyes. It was perfectly content to observe the strange girl, until it’s sensory filaments picked up an incoming blast of air. 

The spider, being only a few months old and raised in isolation in a controlled enclosure, had no idea it built its web over an air duct. The web shook violently until eventually the filaments snapped. The spider free fell, tumbling through the air. It gracelessly landed on the handle loop of Michelle’s backpack, and in a moment of panic crawled into the smallest enclosed space it could find.

Unfortunately, that happened to be Michelle’s shirt collar. Michelle felt the a series of soft prickles against her the nape of her neck, and subconsciously adjusted her backpack. The spider panicked as it felt its hiding spot constrict, slowly crushing it’s carapace. In an effort to save itself, it did the only thing it’s instincts told it to do: It sank it’s fangs into Michelle’s skin. All that did was hasten its demise. There was a crunch, and the poor spider knew no more.

“Ow!” MJ jumped at the surprise prick. That was weird. The only thing she could think of was maybe her geometry compass poked her through the fabric or something. Before she could check, Liz grabbed her arm.

“Hey, the group’s leaving!”

“Oh, right,” MJ said, allowing herself to be pulled along by her crush. And just like that, the mystery prick was forgotten. The rest of the field trip went by in a literal blur.

* * *

“Hey, Michelle?” Liz asked, obviously concerned. “The bus is about to leave. You gotta get off…”

Michelle jolted awake. When did she fall asleep? “Oh, right…” She answered, her voice ever so slightly slurred.

“Are you okay? Come on…” Liz pulled her to her feet, and almost had to immediately catch her. “Oh, okay, steady…”

It took a quite a bit of effort for Liz to help Michelle stumble her way off the bus, and by the time she did, she had made up her mind. She called her dad to pick them both up. He rolled up in his Mercedes a few minutes later.

“Your friend doesn’t look too good, hun. Are you sure we shouldn’t be taking her to the hospital instead?” Adrian said as he helped Michelle flop onto the back seat.

Michelle was pretty out of it, but she was aware enough to hear the word ‘hospital’. She vehemently shook her head. “N-no um,” Michelle paused to take a deep breath in an effort to gain some semblance of cognizance. “Our insurance is really god awful. Can you um, j-just take me home?"

Liz and her father glanced at each other, the pity obvious on their faces. Michelle tamped down the indignation. They were trying to help her out, they didn't deserve her anger.

Michelle told Liz’s dad her address, and soon they were on their way. Michelle deep in the suburbs of Queens. Like a lot of suburbs in New York, the houses were long and thin, pressed so close together that their walls nearly touched. 

“This one,” Michelle sighed, pointing to a comparatively tiny house smooshed between two much larger, obviously recently renovated ones.

“Alright,” Liz said as she helped Michelle onto her feet. The stairs leading up to the porch were a bit perilous, but eventually they made it to the front door.

“I’m uh… I can handle it from here. Thanks so much for the ride,” Michelle said, leaning heavily on the railing.

“It was no problem at all. Um, well. If you need anything, here’s my number,” Liz said as she handed Michelle a scrap of paper. “I’ll see you Monday, um… if you aren’t still sick, that is.”

“Y-yeah, see you at school,” Michelle replied as she stumbled into her house. She really didn’t want to leave it at that, but good lord she was dizzy. All she wanted to do was collapse in bed, which was much easier said than done.

The trip up the flight of stairs to her room was especially hazardous. She put way more faith into the rundown railing than she really should. But somehow it held up, despite her pretty much putting her entire weight on it as she floundered her way up the stairs.

As she made her way into her room, she suddenly felt like her skin was on fire. She hastily stripped as much of her clothes off as she could on her way to bed. Still half clothed, she collapsed against the mattress, so fatigued she didn’t even bother to crawl under the covers. 

She thought she’d fall asleep almost instantly, but a pulsing ache in her bones kept her from fully drifting off. It reminded her of the growing pains she suffered from up until just a few months ago, but all at once and multiplied by a thousand.

All she could do was lie in her sweat soaked bed spread, groaning in pain and too exhausted to do anything about it. Eventually the delirium set in and Michelle fell into a fitful kind of half-sleep.


	2. Sensory Overload

“Oh, God, sun… why…” Michelle groaned, shielding her face from a single ray of light that managed to make it through her blinds.

She sat up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and stared in shock at… everything. Suddenly she found herself living in a world of hyper detail. The fibers in her carpet, the threads of her blanket, the pores of the drywall, everything looked like she was seeing it from the lens of a microscope. 

The thing about seeing everything in near perfect detail at once is that it's a little bit like being blind, in a strange way. When everything is in crystal clear focus, then nothing is. She tried to look at her wall clock, but couldn’t see it because instead of focusing on the clock, her vision just saw the entire wall. All of it, all at once, and she couldn’t take any of it in individually. She could see perfectly, and because of that she couldn’t _see_ anything…

Then the panic started to set in. And she realized with horror that she could _hear_ everything too. The thudding of her heart hammered in her ears, along with the rushing sound of her blood flowing through her veins, even the disgusting squelching sounds of her tendons and muscles shifting under her skin.

And then there was everything else too. She could hear neighbors discussing their morning with their spouses, people talking on the phone, babies crying, hundreds of different conflicting sounds from thousands of speakers… She heard it all in perfect clarity, like it was happening right there in her room.

“Shut up!” Michelle screamed, covering her ears. “Go away! Go away!” She screwed her eyes shut and curled up in a small a ball as possible in her bed, like if hiding from all the stimulus would somehow magically make it all go away.

She didn’t know how long she spent cowering from the sensory overload. It could have been hours or days, she didn’t know. All she knew was the light and sound assaulting her from all directions… until it wasn’t.

Gradually… so slowly she hardly noticed it at first… it all started falling away. The sounds dulled, her vision blurred…

Only it didn’t. 

When she finally peaked her head out from underneath the covers, she found she could still see everything with the same clarity. And she could hear everything too… only somehow now it was different. It was like her eyes and ears had finally relearned how to focus only on the things Michelle consciously wanted them to.

Well, mostly. If she lost her concentration, if she focused for a moment on the distant cacophony both within and outside, if she tried to look at too many things at once, the sensory overload would come rushing back. But unlike before she could focus and shut it out. She just had to make a constant conscious effort.

For the first time in who knows how long, Michelle made an effort to get out of bed. Her feet cautiously touched the carpeting, only for her to hiss and jump back on her bed. She knew it was just her imagination, but the itchy roughness of her off white shag felt like burning coals against the soles of her feet.

She took a deep breath, and tried again. The carpeting still felt like stepping on lava, but she ignored it. It was just her imagination, that’s all. She took a step, and another, then collapsed in a fit of giggles. Oh great, now it went from burning fire to unrelenting tickles. If she wasn’t laughing uncontrollably she’d be cursing like a sailor. 

Whatever happened to her, it was unbearably annoying. Though, it could be worse. The total sensory overload from earlier was almost torturous. At least annoying was tolerable. And that became her mantra. Just tolerate it. She had to tolerate it to function somehow. Eventually she was able to walk without feeling like she was alternatively rubbing her feet on sandpaper and tickled to death.

Slowly but surely, she regained some semblance of control over her own senses. As the minutes ticked by, she learned how to sense the world around her, without sensing _the world around her_.

And just when she thought the worst was over, she had to lean against the wall. Which wasn’t really a problem… until she tried to stop. The whole wall shook as she tried to get up and walk away, only to find her bare back still stuck. 

“Oh _come on!”_

What, now she was sticky too? She stuck her arms and legs straight out in front of her, hoping that gravity would take over and she’d fall. Only she didn’t. Her back stayed perfectly adhered to the patch of wall, giving her the appearance of sitting on nothing.

A long, vile, disgusting string of curses streamed out of Michelles mouth as she tried in vain to unstick herself. Unstick… unstick… _unstick!_ And somehow just thinking that really, really hard worked.

Michelle yelped as she fell to the floor. “Ow…” she groaned as she rubbed her tailbone. She got to her feet, and wondered… could she do that again?

And like the dumbass scientist she was, she pressed her palm to the wall… and pulled it off no problem. “Hm…” She tried again, and really focused this time. And when she tried to pull her hand away, she found that she couldn’t. She _almost_ panicked again. Almost. Then she just thought really hard about not being sticky anymore… and she wasn’t. Again and again, she practiced sticking and unsticking to stuff throughout her room.

Michelle would never be able to properly explain it. It was like how some people could not only wiggle their ears, but wiggle each one independently. Somehow, they just could, and never properly explain which muscles they were flexing and in what order. All Michelle knew was that she had some kind of internal ‘sticking’ muscle, and she could flex and unflex it at will. Mostly.

She hesitated to even think it at first, lest she jinx it, but it really did seem like she had control of her body again. Then she tried to open her door, only to hear the shriek of flexing metal.

“Really? One more stupid ass thing-” she growled as she let go of her doorknob.

“I knew it,” Michelle sighed. 

The doorknob well… it wasn’t much of a doorknob anymore. It was deformed, squished beyond recognition, like if someone squeezed wet sand or clay in their hand. Only it wasn’t sand or clay, but a solid brass doorknob from the turn of the century. And she squeezed it like it was silly putty. She could even see the faint imprint of the wrinkles of her hand.

“Michelle,” she said to herself, “I swear. One more thing. One more stupid ass, impossible ass thing, and I’ll throw myself into the sea. Oh, who am I kidding, I’ll probably grow gills or something…”

So now she had another thing to practice. Thankfully, her strength was easiest to control. She really had to _want_ to lift her bookshelf to be able to do it. The doorknob was probably just a fluke, a side effect of her annoyance. So long as she didn’t get too heated, whatever these… powers were, seemed more or less controllable. 

And that got her thinking. What else could she do? 

Just for fun, she ran a bath and dunked her head under the water. She came up a second later sputtering and coughing for breath. So, apparently she couldn’t breathe water. A burn from the stove confirmed that she wasn’t especially heat resistant either. Though, that had the nice side effect revealing something else. The actually rather severe burn was gone in less than an hour, which meant that she had the ability to heal at an accelerated rate.

Which came in real handy when she smashed her finger with a hammer.

Maybe she shouldn’t have tried to test if she was super durable while also knowing she had super strength, but her earlier annoyance with her powers turned into a strange kind of shocked high and she wasn’t really thinking straight at the time. That being said, the paver in the backyard was cracked in half and the hammerhead broke off entirely. And after all that, as far as she could tell her finger was only slightly fractured. So maybe she did have some level of enhanced durability after all.

Just when she finished making a splint for her finger out of popsicles and surgical tape, her stomach started ominously rumbling.

Her eyes widened. Oh no. What now? Was she gonna burp poisonous gas? Vomit acid like a firehose? Spew fire from her- Oh never mind. That was just her stomach rumbling. She hadn’t eaten in roughly two days and the ravenous hunger was starting to set in.

She made herself a cucumber, avocado, tomato and soy spread sandwich. Not her absolute favorite meal, but at least it was somewhat balanced. She was about to take a bite, when the thought suddenly hit her. What if her sense of taste was super powered or altered in some other way too?

One extremely trepidatious bite later revealed that no, her sense of taste was more or less normal. At least that hadn’t changed. She polished off the sandwich, but found herself still starving. So she made a salad. And a wrap. And a vegetarian quesadilla. And had half a pint of ice cream. Then, and only then was she finally sated. So either she was just really hungry or she needed more calories than normal to function. Both? She hedged her bets and went with both.

She found herself craving something else though. Something much harder to find than a meal. She wanted… normalcy. So much had changed with her body in so little time, with no explanation. Then she thought she might be in a fever induced delusion. Maybe she was still laying in bed, dying of whatever sickness had come over her, and all of this was just her brain’s strange last hallucinations before an inevitable death?

Michelle sat in her kitchen paralyzed by that idea for an embarrassingly long time, before she realized something. If this was just a strangely vivid fever dream, what point was there in freaking out about it? So she got up and went about looking for sources of normalcy again.

She cooked a lot of stuff earlier. Cooking was good. But she wasn’t hungry anymore, and her mom was still out on a work assignment so whatever she cooked would probably go to waste. What else could she do? She decided on cleaning. 

Michelle spent the next twenty minutes cleaning the kitchen, only occasionally sticking to things by accident. She was still getting used to that. Soon, the kitchen was more or less spotless, so Michelle moved on to her room.

She stripped her bed, recoiling at how disgustingly sweat soaked her sheets still were, and threw it all in the washing machine. Next, she got to the pile of clothes she stripped off earlier. 

She picked up her shirt and her heart leapt out of her chest when a huge spider tumbled out of the sleeve. Well, it wasn’t that big really. It was the size of a large coin. But still, it got an embarrassing yelp out of her. When she was finished freaking out she realized it was crushed, half desiccated and very, very dead.

And then the wheels started turning. Her eyes widened as she came to the slow realization. There was a spider on display at the Stark research center. She thought it was just hiding, but what if it actually escaped? And… didn’t they say something about it being a mechanism to deliver modified genes? 

“Oh fu-”

* * *

“So how was your field trip?” Marie asked after finally coming home.

“Kinda cool, mostly boring though,” Michelle replied. 

“Really? I’d think you’d see something at least a tiny bit exciting in the country’s most advanced research laboratory,” Marie said.

Michelle shrugged, “I mean, we did. But it's also owned by Tony Stark, so I’m obligated to inherently dislike it on principle.”

“‘Chell, I’m sure it wasn’t that bad-”

“Mom, they had a pair of human lungs on display. Real, living, breathing cloned human lungs, grown from human tissue genetically modified with lizard DNA.”

Marie blinked, “Okay, I take it back, that is kind of bad.”

“So um, how were the Jameson’s this weekend?” Michelle asked.

“Oh… boy,” Marie sighed. “Their sundown syndrome is getting way worse. Let’s just say I had to clean up so much fecal matter from the walls, and leave it at that.”

“Yeesh, did you at least get a pay bump?”

Marie gave her daughter a pointed look. “Michelle, you know it’s not about pay, it’s about helping people.” She held the look as long as she could, then sighed, “but that being said, no, of course I didn’t get a pay bump.”

They sat in silence for a while. A long while.

“Mom, if you need to rest…”

Marie sighed, “I’m sorry, baby. I know we hardly get to talk…”

“No, no it’s okay, it's fine. I promise,” Michelle urged.

“Can I at least take you to school tomorrow?” 

“Mom, I’m not six, I can go to school by myself,” Michelle smirked, “but sure, yeah. I’d like that.”

Marie gave her daughter a quick hug before bed. And as she let go, she noticed something.

“Michelle, are you… taller?”

“What? Uh… I dunno, maybe?” Michelle said nervously.

“No… you’re definitely taller,” Marie countered. She thought she’d notice if her daughter had suddenly matched her own 5’10” height.

Or maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe she spent so much time at work that she never noticed how big her little girl was getting? That depressing though stuck with her until she fell asleep. It woke with her in the morning, and buzzed around her head the entire time she waited for Michelle to get ready for school.

Michelle was the exact opposite of a vain person. She generally only looked at herself in the mirror if she absolutely had to. It’s not like she hated how she looked, it's just that if she stared in the mirror too long, she’d eventually only see the things she didn’t like.

She didn’t like how the proportions of her neck and head made her look like an overgrown bobble head. She didn’t like her long and slender torso, and how she basically had no waist to speak of. She didn’t like how pointy her shoulders were, how thin her arms looked. She didn’t like how her legs reminded her of a newborn deer. She didn’t like how her overall body shape could be so accurately described as ‘string bean meets 2x4’. With so many things to dislike, she found looking in mirrors to be a pointless and depressing exercise.

Which is why she didn’t notice the changes to her physicality until she hopped out of the shower that morning. Speaking of showers, the sensations of hot water flowing down her body almost triggered her sensory overload again. She got over it… only after her mom yelled at her through the door about wasting water. 

Anyway, yeah, after the shower fiasco, Michelle just happened to look at herself in the mirror and…

Suddenly she found a lot of things to like. Her arms weren’t so slender any more. They weren’t rippling with sinuous muscle either, but they were definitely more athletic. Her legs were less ‘newborn dear’ and more… not _quite_ supermodel, but like, close. Like, up and coming model, maybe. 

And well, not to put too fine a point on it, but before there was very little point in wearing a bra… and now she might wanna consider going bra shopping for the first time in her life. And like, she had hips now. And a butt. Not that she cared. Vanity was dumb, remember?

And in all honesty, the changes weren’t _huge._ At least, Michelle didn’t think so. In fact, she was fairly confident that most people didn’t pay enough attention to her to notice any difference. 

“Oh, come on!” Michelle huffed as she hopped around trying to get the stubborn jeans over her hips. She froze when she heard a pop, followed by the telltale tear of a busted seam. Damn it! Those were her favorite jeans too. Maybe those changes weren’t so great after all...

“Hurry up, Michelle, we’re gonna be late!” Her mother called from down stairs.

Her mom was right, she spent most of the morning trying to find something, _anything_ that fit. Fortunately she found salvation in the very back of her closet in the form of a floral print chiffon dress. Normally she would be caught dead unironically wearing a dress, but this was the only thing that had built in chest support. And most importantly, it actually fit worth a damn.

Marie arched an eyebrow when she saw her daughter hurrying down the stairs, but otherwise didn’t comment. If Michelle wanted to try a different style, good for her. And also, there literally wasn’t any time. Both of them sprinted out the door so fast Marie just barely remembered to lock the door. 

They made it to the city bus with literally two seconds to spare.

* * *

About an hour into class, Michelle started to realize that thinking other people weren’t going to notice might have been a little bit naïve. Nobody said anything, of course. But nobody had to. It was impossible to not notice how everyone looked her up and down at least once as she walked by. And she could tell it wasn’t because she was wearing a dress.

People tended to look her in the chest, then only look her in the eye if they had to talk to her about something. Which was ridiculous because her dress wasn’t even v-cut or anything. People really just got that worked up over vaguely boob shaped bumps, apparently. 

Michelle might be able to handle the extra attention, appreciate it, even, if not for her heightened senses. Every time she walked by someone, she heard the increase of pulse and blood pressure, could see the muscles tensing up… along with other things. 

On top of that, she thought she might have a different power, one that she didn’t notice up until now. Somehow, she knew whenever someone was looking at her. It wasn’t just when people were nearby either. Despite them sitting all the way on the other side of the cafeteria, she could tell Peter and Ned were both looking at her.

Peter and Ned, the last guys she’d ever think would objectify her, were staring at her like a piece of meat. Well, if they were going to stare at her, then she thought it was only fair that she’d spy back. And the cool thing was, with her powers, she didn’t even have to look at them. 

All she had to do was focus her hearing in their general direction, and she got everything she needed to know.

“Do you notice something… different about Michelle today?” Peter asked.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear a dress before,” Ned replied.

Peter shook his head, “No, that’s not it. I mean yes, but no. There’s definitely something else different about her. But uh, we should probably stop staring before it gets creepy though.”

 _Too late_ , Michelle thought. Then she heard someone else echo her sentiments.

“Too late,” Liz said as she sat at Peter and Ned’s table. The way they jolted in unison and both tried to stutter out excuses was almost enough to make Michelle laugh. Almost.

Liz sighed, and Michelle could feel the disappointment radiating off her, along with Peter and Ned’s embarrassment.

“Look you two, there’s nothing wrong with looking at someone in a... um... 'romantic' sense. But there is a very, very clear line between looking and leering,” Liz chastised. “The sooner you learn where that line is, the better off you’ll be.”

“Um… should we… apologize?” Peter asked.

Michelle froze. They better not. Suddenly all she wanted was a chasm to open up in the earth and swallow her whole.

“Oh, no, God no,” Liz laughed. “That would mortify her, trust me. Just be more conscious, and be better moving forward, okay? Anyway, I have somewhere else to be. I better see you at the meeting after school today. It’s our first practice, and there’s a lot to go over.”

The boys both nervously nodded, and to Michelle’s horror, Liz made her way to her own table.

“Hey, you okay?” Liz asked. “You were uh, pretty rough last Friday. I was kind of surprised you made it to school today.”

“What?” Oh right, she was sick. After all that happened, Michelle forgot about that part. “Oh yeah, it was just a twenty four hour bug.”

“So… you tried something different today, huh? I’m guessing the results were a little stronger than you anticipated?”

“I didn’t want any results to begin with,” Michelle grumbled. “All I did was wear a dress.”

“Yeah, sometimes that’s all that it takes,” Liz replied. “I know what it's like. Puberty hit me like a truck too. And like you, I hid it for as long as I could. Though, I have to admit, evidently not nearly as successfully as you. Anyway, one day I got tired of hiding and just embraced it. And of course people started looking at me differently.”

“I don’t wanna be looked at at all. I just want to be left alone…”

Liz mirthlessly laughed. “Same! I felt the exact same, for a long time. Until I realized something. It never matters what I wear, or how I act, people will stare whether I like it or not. Instead of being ashamed of something I have very little control over, I decided to own it, lean into it, embrace it, _enhance it._ Really give them something to stare at.”

“That’s… depressing.”

Liz shrugged, “That’s reality. And, if I’m perfectly honest, there’s a little part of me that likes the attention. Okay, so it’s not so little any more. I’ve actually learned to really like it. You know why?”

Michelle said nothing, but looked expectantly obviously waiting for the answer.

“There’s a certain kind of power that comes from being desired. I mean, you notice how most of the people at the AcaDec tryouts were guys… or certain kinds of girls?”

It was Michelle’s turn to blush, to which Liz replied with a knowing smile.

“Oh, don’t feel bad sweetie. Remember I know what I want and how to get it,” Liz smirked, gesturing to Peter and Ned.

As far as Michelle could tell they had learned their lesson. Now they were embroiled in a heated discussion about Star Wars or something and hardly even glanced in Michelles general direction.

“Take Tweedle-dee and Tweedledum for example,” Liz continued. “Those two nerds know more about material science, chemistry, and computers than most college professors. And they’re freshmen!” 

“And you,” Liz poked Michelle in the chest, “will probably be the greatest philosopher and literary mind of our generation. And guess what? You three aren’t in Robotics or Chemistry Lab, or Creative Writing Club. You’re with me, in the Academic Decathlon team.”

“So let me get this straight,” Michelle replied. “You use yourself as like… a honey pot to lure in the best and brightest in the school? And for what, to make a great Academic Decathlon team?”

“Oh, not just a great team, the best team. We’re gonna win nationals this year. And next year's too, trust me.” Liz noticed Michelle’s unimpressed look. “Hey, a girl’s gotta have a hobby, right? Plus it looks good on my college applications.”

“I mean sure, but like. If that was the case, why’d you let Flash on the team? What does he have to offer other than… monetary donations...” Michelle trailed off as the realization belatedly hit her.

Liz’s expression soured.

“Bougie bastard,” Michelle whispered under her breath.

“Oh he’s worse than that,” Liz said. “At least when you look at my ass you have the decency to at least try to be discrete about it. If there was an Olympic prize for creepy leering, Eugene would win gold. I told him off about it once, and you know what he did? Little richbitch ‘apologized’ by stuffing a benjamin in my bra.”

Michelle gasped, “What the hell? Did you tell anyone?”

“To what end?” Liz asked. “Eugene would call his father, and suddenly my family would be looking down the barrel of an anti-defamation lawsuit.”

Michelle wanted to say something, anything to that. But before she could, the bell rang.

Liz started packing up her stuff. “Anyway, that’s for me to worry about. All you have to worry about is making it to practice after school.”

“Right,” Michelle nodded, “See you then…”

* * *

Practice was exactly like Michelle expected. Liz might have been a total sweetheart most of the time, but during practice she was a veritable taskmaster. Despite very clearly picking team members based on their academic strengths, Liz threw all sorts of questions at them with little regard to what each individual team member was good at.

The implication was clear. Liz didn’t care how good they were at their individual subject. If they were to consistently win, the individuals had to be consistently good at every subject. And while the team was nowhere near competition level, at least they had some level of broad general knowledge. Well, almost all of them did, at least.

Michelle thought that for all his money Flash would at least have some decent grasp of economic theory. And to be fair, he sort of did. He knew about supply side economics and the basic mechanics of the stock market, but precious little else. And maybe Michelle would be able to tolerate his smug ass if that was his only issue.

But she couldn’t help but notice where his eyes wandered, how he looked up and down pretty much every girl in the room. She could handle him ogling her. After Michelle’s talk with Liz she kind of made peace with the fact that people were gonna stare. What she couldn’t tolerate, however, was how he leered at Liz. Especially after Michelle found out he treated her. 

It was then that Michelle made a decision. It was an idiotic, beyond petty, and certainly morally dubious. But she figured she had powers now… maybe she ought to put them to good use. Okay, maybe not good use, but she’d use them nonetheless.


End file.
